Walking From Faith

Years ago I met a young man who was, by all intents and purposes, a sold-out Christian. He really believed, at least he claimed to believe, and the guy read the Bible – a lot. He knew it rather well. One of the things that made him unique was that there was not a hour that went by where he wasn’t praising Jesus. He praised Jesus when someone said hello to him, at the sight of a beautiful flower, when a car passes playing a great song. Every event that occurred around him, every conversation, every circumstance – good and bad – the man “praised Jesus.”

I have to admit that in the face of such noise there is the tendency to wonder why others don’t do the same – including myself. Was I weak in faith? Was he more dedicated and committed to Yeshua than others? What moved this fellow to so constantly, so repeatedly, so ardently praise the modern name of the Lord. His study of the scripture was there, his prayers were there, his commitment to seeking appeared to be there and anyone who knew him would have to admit, “this man was by all appearances, a dedicated believer.”

Over the years I watched him grow in knowledge and understanding of biblical concepts. I watched as he would sing praise songs to the top of his lungs without a care, and passionately tried to preach the written word before gatherings of people. If I were a betting man, I might have wagered in that day that the man was a true disciple. But I would have lost.

Several years passed and I noticed that the emotional fervor he had toward the faith began to wane. Perhaps this was in response to the fact that other believers didn’t ever really receive him and his passion. He had a hard time adjusting to the more conservative people who were quiet in their respective beliefs and appeared to have lacked some of his zeal. In time I saw some cultural alienation occur toward his person and this only grew as he started to see himself as a homosexual and to openly admit it publicly for the first time in his thirty or so years of life. As his “pastor” (I was really only a teacher who befriended him) we had numerous talks about his being a homosexual and whether he was acceptable to God. I always took the time, whenever the subject came up (and it came up a lot) to remind him that his homosexuality, dormant or active, was not what would ever keep him from the Kingdom but that it would be the presence or absence of his faith. I could not have driven this point home more to an individual struggling with their sexual preferences but in time I saw that he wanted more from me – he wanted me to say that his homosexuality was acceptable to God, even preferable to Him in his particular case.

After years of giving him rides, taking him to doctors appointments (he didn’t have a car) talking him to eat, helping him get various jobs, buying him a few articles of clothing, I noticed that he had an increasing focus on his sexuality. Perhaps he was struggling with wanting to act out as in the past he had only had the attraction. In angst he would bring the subject up more and more, and when I refused to promote homosexuality as of God, he became more dedicated to argue this specific point. It was not enough for me to repeatedly say and reiterated the following points to him in one way or another,

• God loves all people wherever they are at – so much so that He gave His only Son to pay for the sins of the world.
• Homosexuality would no more keep someone out of the kingdom than any other sin that so easily besets humankind.
• That his sin nature was not one whit more egregious that mine or anyone else’s, and
• That we all are pleasing to God only by faith.

Instead of finding peace in these principles, he began to become very “one-note” and insisted on repeating to me that he was “born” gay, that God created him gay, and that he was not going to let anyone tell him otherwise.

I tried to repeatedly explain that gay is never the issue. But emotionally, that wasn’t enough. He wanted more. He wanted to celebrate his weakness in the flesh rather than His strength in the King. Over time he started to hang out more and more with people who thought like he thought, and it took about six months to a year to sort of disappear into the company of the crowd that pleased him emotionally. What he chose did not please the man spiritually or according to the scripture. It pleased him and his flesh emotionally. He got in community with other people who embraced his preferred view of himself and in finding that reception he found company that he preferred.

Several months passed and he showed back up to our gathering. He was wearing LGBTQ iconography, had painted his nails and was wore a politically driven (and frankly, vulgar) statement emblazoned across his chest. He was received with love, but several people couldn’t refrain from distancing themselves from his person.

After a few more months I called him up and asked if I could take him to lunch. He agreed and it was there that he let me know that he was no longer a believer and follower of the Jesus that he once adored. After he reiterated all of the points, he had been trying to get me to accept, we parted ways – at least physically.

Over the years, I’ve had several conversations with the man, each time he became more and more distant from the faith, from God and in our last conversation was an outright mocker of God all-together. It was then that we parted ways – by my suggestion – because we had nothing left in common.

I did not part ways with him because he was gay nor because he was a vocal promotor of the LGBTQ, BLM, Woke community. I parted ways with him because he was no longer a brother in faith. I do not condemn him for his choices, but I do seem them as sad and very unfortunate and my hope is he will someday remember, with perfect recall, that without faith it is impossible to please Him, and with faith, it is impossible to not.